Company Has Exhausted Its Resources, Program On Hold

Armadillo Aerospace founder John Carmack said at the QuakeCon gaming conference in Dallas last week that the company has suspended its operations following a parachute failure during a STIG-B rocket test in January. The rocket hit the ground at high speed. Carmack, a video gaming entrepreneur, said that the company is, for all intents and purposes, out of money.

Carmack said at the conference that the company is in "sort of a hibernation mode," and that he has suspended "most of the development work" for this year, according to a report on the New Space Journal online.

Carmack had stopped accepting development work two years ago to focus on development of a reusable suborbital sounding rocket. But he also said that he had not been as hands-on with the company, and when NASA got involved in the project, many of his former volunteers-turned-employees spent more time planning and reviewing, which made the space agency happy but not allowing for rapid development of the company's systems. He said he had poured over a million dollars a year of his own money into the program.

Carmack said he is currently seeking outside investors to bring Armadillo out of what he called "hibernation" mode.